Do College Bowl Sponsorships Impact Google Searches for Brands?
In the short term, yes; In the long term, not so much.
In 2015 there were 41 College Football Bowl games, the most ever. There were so many games that three teams with losing records got to play. In 2016 there will be 40 bowls, meaning that 63% of FBS teams will get to play in the postseason.
One notable – and seemingly ever-changing – element of the bowls are the game’s title sponsors. Often paired with the title of the bowl, sponsor names have created some memorable games. Who can forget the Poulan Weed Eater Independence Bowl or the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s St. Petersburg Bowl.
Bowl organizers themselves admit that these sponsors are crucial. The director of what is now called the Foster Farms Bowl told the Associated Press that “It’s critical, you can’t survive without a sponsor.” In 2013 they did without … and lost more than $100,000. IEG Research notes that for the 2012-13 bowl season, title
sponsors coughed up $99 million.
So the 99 Million Dollar Question remains: Is it worth it?
Stock prices say no. Former ESPN execs say no. The fact that the sponsorships change so frequently says no.
Google Search results might tell us a different story. Looking at month-to-month and year-over-year changes in search result volume shows that sponsorship drives Google searches.
Bowl Search Impact, Quick Glance
- Seven bowls – BattleFrog, Quick Lane, Raycom, Chick-fil-a, Franklin American
Mortgage, Gildan, Popeyes – had a surge of traffic during the week of their bowl games and a “sustained” increase (meaning their July searches were up significantly year to year). - 19 bowls had noticeable spikes during the week of the bowl, but did not sustain significant YTY search growth six months later.
- 12 bowls had neither a significant bump during their bowl week or YTY
growth. - Two bowls – Camping World and Zaxby’s – didn’t make much of a dent during their bowl week, but saw huge YTY growth.
Items of Note:
Huge spikes from regional or newer brands – BattleFrog, Famous Idaho Potato, Foster Farms, Nova Home Loans, and National Funding all saw a massive increase during the bowl weeks compared to normal.
Repeat sponsors see similar spikes to 2014 – Sponsors like Foster Farms, Russell Athletic and Famous Idaho Potato all exceeded their average searches by 10x, but their search levels were only +16-42% higher than the same week in 2014 … where they also sponsored bowl games.
Larger brands don’t see much percent change in search – Searches for larger brands like Allstate, Capital One, and Autonation remain relatively flat across time frames. Of course because we were looking at percentages, the raw search increases from brands with heavier search volume could easily equal the spikes from upstarts. See BattleFrog vs. AutoZone.
Generic terms are generally flat – Unsurprisingly, generic terms like those seen with the Military and Hawaii Bowls didn’t move the needle.
Sustaining search traffic is difficult – Only six search terms had 10% more searches six months later. Increases for some terms – like Camping World and Motel 6 – may be seasonally affected. Indeed, YTY searches for the last week in July for those terms are flat.
The Curious Case of Zaxby’s – None of the other brands saw a sustained increase in search volume like Zaxby’s. Search results began to increase significantly just after the week of December 26. Sure, 2016 marketing efforts may have led to the jump, but maybe we’ll just say that it was the bowl sponsorship…
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Full Data
Methodology: Normalized Google search data from 9/2014 – 8/2016. Comparisons of weekly data are not precise as they’re based on dates instead of numbered weeks. The data from the searches was selected for either the week leading up to or the week of the bowl.
For search terms with multiple words, quotes were used for exact phrase matching. This means that not all relevant search traffic may have been captured, but since sponsor names aren’t compared against other I don’t think it makes too much difference.